"Impact IUPUI: The Celebration Continues"

"Impact IUPUI: The Celebration Continues"

Introduction and Acknowledgements

Thank you for that kind introduction, Barbara. Let me take a moment to introduce my wife Laurie Burns McRobbie, the First Lady of Indiana University.

It is also my pleasure that a number of the university’s trustees could join us this evening. Would you help me welcome MaryEllen Bishop and her husband Michael, and Phil Eskew who is here with his wife Ann.

I am also pleased to welcome colleagues from Purdue University: Lisa Calvert, Vice President of Advancement, and Robin Bellinger, Associate Vice President of Advancement.

And a special welcome to President Emeritus of Purdue University and former dean of the IU School of Medicine Steven Beering and his wife Jane?

An Exciting Time for Indiana University

This is a tremendously exciting time for Indiana University. Just last night we celebrated the success of the Matching the Promise Campaign for IU Bloomington. This campaign raised a record-breaking $1,144,423,256. This campaign has offered the promise of an affordable and accessible IU Bloomington education to some of the state’s and the country’s very best students. It has generated endowed support for some of our most outstanding faculty. And it has helped transform the landscape of the IU Bloomington campus with state-of-the-art education and research facilities.

The Celebration Continues

Tonight the celebration continues. We are launching the public phase of the IMPACT IUPUI Campaign and announcing the campaign goal.

This campaign focuses on four major areas:
First, it supports student success. The IUPUI campus is a key place in the battle to keep the best brains right here in Indiana, and financial assistance is vital in that effort. It helps attract and retain a diverse, engaged, and committed student body, exactly the type of student body that has made IUPUI an award-winning campus.

Second, this campaign supports IUPUI’s excellence as a center for the health and life sciences. Over 50% of Indiana’s physicians, 40% of nurses, 90% of dentists, and 60% of optometrists, are trained at IU, and our research has led to advancements in the treatments of cancer, diabetes, and cardiac care, as well as breakthroughs in physical therapy, dental care, and urban health issues. This campaign will help us enhance our life-saving efforts in these important areas.

Third, this campaign focuses on civic engagement. Whether IUPUI faculty and students are right here in Central Indiana or halfway around the world, commitment to their communities is such a part of IUPUI campus life that it impacts education and research on this campus.

Fourth, this campaign will enable IUPUI to continue to thrive as an urban research campus. By translating research into practice, IUPUI fulfills a mission of advancing the state and the intellectual growth of its citizens to the highest levels.

The Goal

These four major areas will continue to direct our efforts in this campaign as it moves into its public phase.

Now for the goal of the IUPUI Impact Campaign:

Tonight, I am pleased to announce that the goal of the campaign is $1.25 billion.

This is the third billion-dollar campaign for Indiana University. The IUPUI campus was the first in the university’s history to surpass the billion-dollar mark in fundraising back in 2004. As I mentioned, it was announced last night that Matching the Promise surpassed the billion-dollar mark, also setting a university record. And now we embark on our third billion-dollar campaign and aim to set a new record when the campaign concludes in 2013. To our knowledge, only one other university in this country—Stanford—has undertaken three campaigns of this magnitude.

Add to that the remarkable fact that we are closing a more than $1 billion campaign for one campus on one night and announcing a more than $1 billion campaign for another campus of the same university the following night. This may be unprecedented in the history of higher education.

The progress that we have already made towards this goal suggests the remarkable generosity, dedication and loyalty of this campus’ friends and alumni. We are deeply grateful to all of you who have given so generously. In a few moments, Chancellor Bantz will share the great progress we already have made toward our ambitious goal.

Conclusion

Let me close by turning to words that IU President Stahr uttered at the groundbreaking of this campus in 1968. He predicted that IUPUI would, as he put it, “prove to be one of the great urban universities of the land.”1

Today, we take another bold and ambitious step towards making that prediction come true.